Well, that was a week of good fortune and exceptionally good progress. Grats to the group on getting the full T1 clear done, it's awesome that we were able to walk into the Ivar and Gorth fights (the latter with EXTREMELY minimal prep and a fairly confused raid leader!) and clear them with no wipes. A real testament to the skill of the group. Basically though, I think the message of the weekend is that we're pretty much past T1 - its T2s all the way now!

Big thanks to the raid group for all the prep you have been putting in and for the way you're all responding to my constant requests for re-traits, swapping to alts, different equipment etc. etc. I don't have time on the night to thank everyone for doing things when I ask, cause I'm trying to balance and check up and prepare for dozen different things but it's really pleasing to see people responding to the strategy and preparing their character in the right way.

The focus of this post is looking at the next goals of the group in each of these wings and how we will stretch ourselves to reach the T2 challenge modes.

Oh, and one quick question - who won the Ivar T1 armour piece? I just like to keep records of this so that ppl don't inadvertently roll on a piece they've already won

Disease

Not much more we can do here except get it completely on farm, no wipes. I understand there were a few wipes but I obviously wasn't there so don't have much to contribute to this.

Wound

While the hard mode isn't achievable in the short term, we should be setting ourselves up to work towards it, especially as a regular clear is so easy. In preparation for the HM strategy we will probably keep the hunters on the mammoths at all times (until they're dead obviously) which will result in much quicker and sometimes overlapping waves of adds. This will mean that we need to be doing excellent AOE damage and balling up mobs a lot better, in addition to being right on top of interrupts and corruption clears.

Poison

This is our next achievable HM clear - however people really need to take in and understand the platform strategy. If you EVER hop off a platform when you're the only person on it BAM, that's challenge failed. Instantly. We had the tank positioning happening a lot better with some changes in the positioning strategy this time and there might be some further refinemenets there, our biggest issue on getting the T2 clear (in addition to just coping with the damage) is going to be getting the mechanics of the platform swapping down pat because it's so easy to fail the challenge if you do it wrong.

Fear

This is going to be very tough to beat on T2 (and a HM clear is a long, long way down the track), but I'm not sure there's much point us trying it on T1 anymore, other than for north men medallions. Some time in the next few weeks we will hopefully be able to clear the previous three wings quickly enough to have a good look at this fight, it's a massively different beast with all those fire puddles getting dropped. Based on our limited attempt last night, combining boss movement with tank swapping is going to take quite a bit of practice.

Ivar

Now, we got through that pretty easily last night but don't get cocky - on T2 the damage in the final phase is approximatley doubled (things that were hitting me for 1k last night were closer to 2k on tier 2). Here's my damage logs from last night (all of this was damage from Ivar during the Ivar phase, the name in the left column is the corruption ability that the attack is tied to):

Each of those attacks was happening every 20-30s. The whole fight went for about 6min and we got through the final phase in about 1.5min. All of that damage was shadow and it is a combination of tactical and melee (not exactly sure of the breakdown there). This really shows the importance of mitigations, which will be amplified on T2, every 1% of extra mitigation is equivalent to about 350 morale there.

Due to the huge amount of damage in T2, this is probably not an achievable fight for us without at least 1 preferably 2 captains, but hopefully we'll make some progress on that front in the near future. I should also note that beating Ivar T2 HM isn't much more difficult than beating him without meeting the challenge (it just makes the champion fight a bit longer/harder, the actual Ivar fight isn't any more difficult).

Also, as I said on the night, a huge apology to everyone for my mistrait there which left me without AOE wound removal (and no removal at all half the time because those salves weren't clicking properly for me). I realised JUST as we were walking into the fight but didn't want to delay the raid further by running back out. It's a mistake I won't make again.

Gortheron

I'm really glad we got to see that because it makes writing up the T2 strat pretty easy. That felt like a pretty easy fight I know, but that's just because T1 doesn't punish us for our mistakes (and we made many!). It's basically the same fight on T2, just a lot, lot harder and with a couple of extra mechanics, and if we make a mistake in execution we get punished very quickly. Eg. On T2 if mobs get loose and hit healers, they die, we wipe. The adds are very very dangerous on T2. Also T1 has none of the wounds, diseases, fears and poisons which make T2 somewhat stressful, nor does it have any of the corruptions which are all really nasty.

With a more prepared strategy, and good execution of it, I actually feel that this is an achievable fight on T2 (especially with 2 lore-masters and a bit better coordination of our CC). It just requires a heck of a lot of concentration over a long, sustained fight.

I won the Gortheron token - the chest piece; not sure who won Ivar. My 98 was a very lucky roll.

Speaking of Gortheron, I tried to keep disable on him as he was being kited. It probably did not make a material difference in that fight. Seemed like a good idea in theory, but I spent a lot of time chasing him even with a Trick Range legacy. The time chasing Gortheron took away from the other things I normally do, like cc, dps, and cj's. Unless Gortheron really hits hard on T2, I think I will focus more on cc and cj's; applying disables on Gortheron if he happens to be close.

The Bracelet and Trinket of Protection I posted in chat combine for over 1000 in Tactical resists. If interested, you can get both from a quest chain from Sylfa in the Rotting Cellar.

Last edited by Ellda on Mon Jul 11, 2011 4:18 pm; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : edit for clarity)

Also a note to when we have two LM again that we shld place sticky tar at the opposite side of each other so when the tank is kiting the mob/boss will almost be permantely slowed at least for the duration of the tar. Warden might also be able to throw hampering javs to permantely slow the boss. This may prevent the some melee dmg.

gorth (like most post-SoA bosses) is unfortunately immune to slows. That's not to say we can't use tar better . The strat will be to place it over each entrance as it opens up to help with the initial control of the adds.

Also, i'll suggest a new strategy with the bane flare which is to have one of us use it, pop call to valar 15s later, use it again and then have the other LM do the same. That'll give us a full minute of bane flare (and only 15s until the first LM is back off cooldown). With a decent rank of +targets on the book (I might go up to +4, for a 9-wight mez!) that should lock down most of the wights.

Anyway, strat post will be up soon. Strat will be a bit different to what we did on sunday due to some of the T2 mechanics, but it really looks like an achievable fight if we get our strategy down and are able to execute it well.

So, first up, woohoo a T1 clear, who would have thought it possible, especially given how we started with the Wound wing soem 2 months ago Sure that last fight wasn't totally pretty, but given it was the first time we had seen it, no strat to read up on and we just went for it for the hell of it, it just shows how turbine consider T1 to be a PUG option. Well, a PUG from the point of view that your group has raid experience (which we have now) and explains how those groups on the older servers got OD T1 done in the first two days of release.Even so, I have no doubt that doing a couple of the wings at T2, before trying a full T1 clear, turned out to be a veyr good idea. Getting somewhat use to what T2 mobs are like and how to push your character and focus for 10-15mins just makes T1 that much easier.So now it's onward and upward to the really testing content.

A couple of notes. The Ivar fight and those puddle drops. By the time you see and even half read the chat text, it's too late. Even if you do move, the puddle still drops where you were standing and not where you are standing at the time. It seems like it would almost be better for malee to stand back (use whatever range attack you happen to have) and wait for the first round of text so you can see what preceeds the puddle drop and move away when that happens.That would mean also picking the phase change and stepping back each time to wait and see what the new cycle is.It was a whole new experience in the Balrog fight with my RK. Even tho she's still not fully speced up, being range no doubt helped with survival, but outside of that, it was a very different fight compared to my Champ. On the Balrog I wasn't DPSing at all, it was all 'support', either from trying to help with healing across the whole raid group (tho even then, some damage was just too great, especially given the RK's lack of really quick, big heals) or applying some support skills.Do Not Fall to Flame is a real game changer. Everytime I had it up and there was the big AOE, all I saw was a floating absorbed and my whole fellowship group taking no damage. Compare that to the couple of times I missed (either on CD or was healing someone, etc), you just see a big drop in morale across the whole group (which will no doubt be more at T2). Other then that, it was a constant mad pushing of skills all over the place, unlike on my Champ, where it's move up a bit, hit the usual 1-4 malee attacks, repeat.I'd love to hear from the healers just what healing OD is like and any tricks, especially from a RK point of view, as I would think they do a hell of job keeping us all alive most of the time. Not that I want to main heal it anytime soon.

From a future T2 point of view for the Balrog, I'm happy enough to bring my RK most of the time, since I think her skills would help a lot more then some Champ DPS. There is however one twist to that, in that I would want to run it at least once on my Champ, from the point of view of getting the T2 armour token once it's my turn again. After that, more then happy to use my RK.

Lastly, just want to send out a big tanks to the leadership group and especially Babble for all the hard work he does with strat posts, organising it all, etc, etc, don't think for a moment it isn't noticed or much appreciated

Anthony wrote:A couple of notes. The Ivar fight and those puddle drops. By the time you see and even half read the chat text, it's too late. Even if you do move, the puddle still drops where you were standing and not where you are standing at the time. It seems like it would almost be better for malee to stand back (use whatever range attack you happen to have) and wait for the first round of text so you can see what preceeds the puddle drop and move away when that happens.

Oh yes, I was going to ask about that. Thanks for giving feedback.

As for what to do, we have a couple of options here. Remember though that we want to do as much as we can to keep melee hitting the boss as much as possible, especially in the last two phases, because every second of damage counts. Lets say we have 2 champs and 2 burgs. With raid buffs and going all out in the final phase etc. that's quite probably 2000DPS. The puddles happen appx every 20-25s, If we miss 5s of damage in between each puddle because you're all hanging outside melee range that's 10k+ lost damage. So it's a real balance between being careful while still maintaining damage - which is why this is souch a tough fight for melee DPS.

First, as you say, we can figure out the preceding call each phase and then get ready to run away a few seconds after that callout happens. This is probably the best option, it just requires someone to be assigned this job and then to call out at the appropriate time. Another option is to have someone count to 20s after every puddle and then call out for all the melee chars to run into the middle. Again, this gets a little disrupted because the phase changes reset the cooldown on the skill but this can work (there's a youtube with a group doing that, can't find it right now tho).

So yeah, if it's not going to work just waiting for the callout to actually happen and then running away as fast as possible, we do need to do something else.

Durin's bane is a healing challenge, no questions about that. We'll probably take you up on that offer re nyssiel, depending on raid composition, we do want at least two RKs each run even if one of them is on DPS. Tier 2 is still not a DPS race, but because the platform starts to fill up with very long duration fire puddles, there is a DPS race element to it because the fight gets more complicated to control the longer it goes on, so stacking healers eventually ends up creating problems.

Lastly, just want to send out a big tanks to the leadership group and especially Babble for all the hard work he does with strat posts, organising it all, etc, etc, don't think for a moment it isn't noticed or much appreciated

thanks for the tanks, dunno where i'll fit 'em but sure sounds like fun .

Psychobabble wrote:First, as you say, we can figure out the preceding call each phase and then get ready to run away a few seconds after that callout happens. This is probably the best option, it just requires someone to be assigned this job and then to call out at the appropriate time. Another option is to have someone count to 20s after every puddle and then call out for all the melee chars to run into the middle. Again, this gets a little disrupted because the phase changes reset the cooldown on the skill but this can work (there's a youtube with a group doing that, can't find it right now tho).

So yeah, if it's not going to work just waiting for the callout to actually happen and then running away as fast as possible, we do need to do something else.

I guess it's a case of what hurts more, the loss of DPS or the amount of puddle drops, but yeah, I can see how a stack of range classes would make it much easier. Guess it's just something we will have to try out and see what works.

Psychobabble wrote:Durin's bane is a healing challenge, no questions about that. We'll probably take you up on that offer re nyssiel, depending on raid composition, we do want at least two RKs each run even if one of them is on DPS. Tier 2 is still not a DPS race, but because the platform starts to fill up with very long duration fire puddles, there is a DPS race element to it because the fight gets more complicated to control the longer it goes on, so stacking healers eventually ends up creating problems.

I could mix it up a little and not really heal at all, just DPS, debuffs (like writ of cold, which I assume works) and have 'do not fall to flame' up as much as I can. While the buff skill only last so long, given the fight, there is no way the effect will run out before it gets consumed by a Balrog attack. As such, every time it's absorbed, that's one lot of fellowship wide damage the healer doesn't have to heal.Of course it doesn't mean they should be to happy with themselves and think the healing is going great and is so easy, since if it miss times, all of a sudden a lot of damage shows up. I was using do not fall to frost on the trash as well, again, that absorbed a lot of damage.

Psychobabble wrote:thanks for the tanks, dunno where i'll fit 'em but sure sounds like fun .

Ok, not sure when we'll actually head back in there, but i've posted the Gortheron strat. It's quite different from what we did on sunday, primarily because the T2 corruption mechanism means that the non-cced adds need to be constantly killed in the early phases.

I haven't done class specific notes, but hopefully it's pretty obvious what builds people should run there - it's a long fight which needs constant dps and a good, sustained, level of healing. As far as I know, there's no particular damage type which needs to be mitigated against.

Ellda, I note your feedback on how hard it is to apply tricks to Gortheron. He does hit extremely hard on T2 thanks to his corruption, but hopefully the kiting will be enough to keep the damage down. You can probably also get one off on him at the start of each phase and then subsequently whenever melee piles up on the boss.